Wendell Berry discusses this matter obliquely in Jayber Crow, but I've recently encountered it in real life. I've expressed to my boss that I think it would be valuable for him to know more Arkansas vegetable farmers, not just gardeners but people who are producing organically for a local market, since that's what he is trying to do. There is so much to learn from each other. Would it not be more valuable to discuss with other farmers how they produce compost than to have me share my anecdotal experience and read a book on it? I certainly can contribute, but community exchange of knowledge from people's varied experiences is so important, I think. I don't think it's possible to be better than people doing similar things as you without learning from them.
Which is not to say that P, my boss, doesn't know other farmers. He does, but the farmers he knows, and talks to, are cattle farmers, grass farmers. They work alone. The modern farmer's lifestyle is a solitary one, where he lives out in the country and has the equipment to be able to do everything on his own. (I use the male pronoun here because the farmers I've come across who fit this paradigm are all male; it would be interesting to explore the role of gender in farmers' connection to and involvement with community.) But farming has not always been this way, and I'm interested in exploring how this anti-social isolation came into being.
For obvious reasons, most farming has been done in rural areas. People needed ample space for their livestock, to grow any supplemental feed, and forests to supply them with fuel. But they also hoped to be within a day of somewhere they could acquire anything they couldn't produce themselves, as well as news and connection to the outside world. Economies of necessity made it so that farms were sufficiently large and spaced out, but not overly large or isolated. As specialization occurred, some farms and farmers started to focus on growing grains, for people and for animals, and others started growing animals for human consumption. Division of labor is valuable for many tasks, but here is one instance where it has proved ultimately unsustainable. As the various parts of the farm ecosystem were broken up, commodified, and specialized by different individuals, farmers became more dependent on each other yet less connected to each other. A farmer in Kansas would grow grain, that would be shipped by train to Arkansas, where a farmer would buy it as feed for his livestock. The farmer would still have to travel to town to get the feed, which he had to do anyway occasionally, but he could travel longer distances, thanks to the car, yet his farm could be smaller since he wasn't dependent on the grass he could grow. Or more likely, he would just keep more cows on the same amount of land, especially since he didn't have to set any apart for growing grains (for his own use or livestock's) or vegetables (also becoming easy to acquire year round in the town he could drive his truck to). Here you had Farmer Joe, now dependent on the farmers of Kansas and California, yet feeling like the only person he depended upon was his grocer. As for his own farming knowledge, only raising cattle made things simpler, right? He could easily master that, which he already did well, and pass that knowledge on to his children. With fewer variables at stake, or so it seemed, there was less need to compare notes with neighbors about how to grow the best tomatoes. Heck, the cows might seem to be getting sick more, but there are drugs for that now, so just a quick does of antibiotics, easily available from the store in town, and all is well again! This same kind of thing happened for the grain farmers and the vegetable farmers - emphasis on specialization, made possible thanks to easily available fertilizers and other inputs.
But ultimately, we've seen, this doesn't work. It's bad karma. Ultimately, we need to be able to support ourselves, with the help of our communities, and then we will be able to help our communities. We need to stop seeing commodities and start seeing vegetables, grains, animals, lumber, etc. as valuable and essential pieces of fragile ecosystems. Self-sufficient and subsistence farming does not mean that you can or might become completely isolated, because you don't need anyone or anything else. Rather, there is always room to do things better, easier. With some many variables in play, there are so many unique and creative approaches to anything. And there are always new pests or blights or droughts or floods or other challenges. And thus there is always a compulsion to talk to your neighbors, to learn and discuss and help each other improve.
